Competition around U.S. college admissions, particularly at the most selective colleges and universities, has never been greater, and recent research suggests that where one attends college matters ...
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Competition around U.S. college admissions, particularly at the most selective colleges and universities, has never been greater, and recent research suggests that where one attends college matters in terms of persistence, graduation, and future opportunities. In this high-stakes environment, parents and students in affluent secondary schools approach preparation for selective admissions as an “arms race,” seeking out opportunities and experiences to differentiate themselves from the rest of college applicants. Drawing upon ethnographic data collected from a purposefully selected tri-school sample of students, parents, and school personnel, Class Warfare peers underneath the “sacred moment” of the college admissions process, offering a worm's eye view of the day-to day and week-by-week struggles over class positioning as engaged by differentially located class and race actors in public and private privileged secondary schools in early 21st century United States. The college admissions process represents the culmination of intentionally waged “class work” that is linked to an envisioned battleground over forms of privilege represented by admission to particular kinds of postsecondary destinations. Class Warfare details the extent to which and the ways in which parents, school counselors, teachers, and students at three iconic, privileged, secondary schools in the United States work to “lock in” the next generation's privileged class status via the postsecondary admissions process, illuminating the ways in which sector of secondary school, student position in the opportunity structure of the school, and degree of parent/student closeness to the habitus embedded within particularly located privileged institutions shape “class work” and future class structure.Less

Lois WeisKristin CipolloneHeather Jenkins

Published in print: 2014-04-02

Competition around U.S. college admissions, particularly at the most selective colleges and universities, has never been greater, and recent research suggests that where one attends college matters in terms of persistence, graduation, and future opportunities. In this high-stakes environment, parents and students in affluent secondary schools approach preparation for selective admissions as an “arms race,” seeking out opportunities and experiences to differentiate themselves from the rest of college applicants. Drawing upon ethnographic data collected from a purposefully selected tri-school sample of students, parents, and school personnel, Class Warfare peers underneath the “sacred moment” of the college admissions process, offering a worm's eye view of the day-to day and week-by-week struggles over class positioning as engaged by differentially located class and race actors in public and private privileged secondary schools in early 21st century United States. The college admissions process represents the culmination of intentionally waged “class work” that is linked to an envisioned battleground over forms of privilege represented by admission to particular kinds of postsecondary destinations. Class Warfare details the extent to which and the ways in which parents, school counselors, teachers, and students at three iconic, privileged, secondary schools in the United States work to “lock in” the next generation's privileged class status via the postsecondary admissions process, illuminating the ways in which sector of secondary school, student position in the opportunity structure of the school, and degree of parent/student closeness to the habitus embedded within particularly located privileged institutions shape “class work” and future class structure.

Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but ...
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Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as this book makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. The book examines a typical suburban American high school to explain how some students get ahead. The book's author undertook four years of research at a Midwestern high school to examine the mercilessly competitive culture that drives students to advance. The book reveals the many ways the community's ideology of achievement plays out: students hone their work ethics and employ various strategies to succeed, from negotiating with teachers to cheating; parents relentlessly push their children while manipulating school policies to help them get ahead; and administrators aid high performers in myriad ways, even naming over forty students “valedictorians.” Yet, as the book shows, this unswerving commitment to individual advancement takes its toll, leading to student stress and fatigue, incivility and vandalism, and the alienation of the less successful.Less

Producing Success : The Culture of Personal Advancement in an American High School

Peter Demerath

Published in print: 2009-12-15

Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as this book makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. The book examines a typical suburban American high school to explain how some students get ahead. The book's author undertook four years of research at a Midwestern high school to examine the mercilessly competitive culture that drives students to advance. The book reveals the many ways the community's ideology of achievement plays out: students hone their work ethics and employ various strategies to succeed, from negotiating with teachers to cheating; parents relentlessly push their children while manipulating school policies to help them get ahead; and administrators aid high performers in myriad ways, even naming over forty students “valedictorians.” Yet, as the book shows, this unswerving commitment to individual advancement takes its toll, leading to student stress and fatigue, incivility and vandalism, and the alienation of the less successful.

Few would deny that getting ahead is a legitimate goal of learning, but the phrase implies a cruel hierarchy: a student does not simply get ahead, but gets ahead of others. This book turns a critical ...
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Few would deny that getting ahead is a legitimate goal of learning, but the phrase implies a cruel hierarchy: a student does not simply get ahead, but gets ahead of others. This book turns a critical eye on this paradox. Offering the voices and viewpoints of students at a “last chance” high school in California, the book tells the story of students who have, in fact, been left behind. Detailing a youth-led participatory action research project, the book uncovers deep barriers to educational success that are embedded within educational discourse itself. Struggling students internalize descriptions of themselves as “at risk,” “low achieving,” or “troubled”—and by adopting the very language of educators, they also adopt its constraints and presumption of failure. Showing how current educational discourse does not, ultimately, provide an adequate vision of change for students at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, the book levies a powerful argument that social justice in education is impossible today precisely because of how we talk about it.Less

These Kids : Identity, Agency, and Social Justice at a Last Chance High School

Kysa Nygreen

Published in print: 2013-05-07

Few would deny that getting ahead is a legitimate goal of learning, but the phrase implies a cruel hierarchy: a student does not simply get ahead, but gets ahead of others. This book turns a critical eye on this paradox. Offering the voices and viewpoints of students at a “last chance” high school in California, the book tells the story of students who have, in fact, been left behind. Detailing a youth-led participatory action research project, the book uncovers deep barriers to educational success that are embedded within educational discourse itself. Struggling students internalize descriptions of themselves as “at risk,” “low achieving,” or “troubled”—and by adopting the very language of educators, they also adopt its constraints and presumption of failure. Showing how current educational discourse does not, ultimately, provide an adequate vision of change for students at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, the book levies a powerful argument that social justice in education is impossible today precisely because of how we talk about it.

Based on nearly six years of fieldwork in and around high poverty secondary schools on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, this book uses the tools of the teacher-ethnographer to take on questions ...
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Based on nearly six years of fieldwork in and around high poverty secondary schools on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, this book uses the tools of the teacher-ethnographer to take on questions touching us all: Even if they “know better,” why do so many adolescents frequently get caught up in the situated destruction of non-selective big city schools? Although putatively of the same race as many of the other students wrecking their educational environments, how do some male students self-identifying as black avoid the seductions of “street” ways of being and, in extremely rare cases, develop capacities for emotional self-control and concentration great enough to allow them to use their “failing ghetto schools” as launching pads into elite colleges? Inside their classrooms, why is it so difficult if not impossible for most teachers to consistently reproduce the triumphs of a handful of their colleagues rather than contribute, more or less forcefully, to their own “burn outs”? As the vignettes and biographical case studies woven into the empirical chapters reveal, adequate answers to these questions require that we move away from romanticized notions about resistance, disembodied fantasies about explicit cultural interpretations preceding real time actions, and essentialist assumptions about (the perpetual salience of) blackness and other seemingly discrete ethno-racial categories. Developing a fundamentally new way of thinking about everday dealing and self-destruction in fiercely segregated, physically unsafe, and emotionally toxic schools can help us avoid more pseudo-interventions and finally get serious about reforming the educational experiences of the poorly born.Less

Toxic Schools : High-Poverty Education in New York and Amsterdam

Bowen Paulle

Published in print: 2013-10-04

Based on nearly six years of fieldwork in and around high poverty secondary schools on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, this book uses the tools of the teacher-ethnographer to take on questions touching us all: Even if they “know better,” why do so many adolescents frequently get caught up in the situated destruction of non-selective big city schools? Although putatively of the same race as many of the other students wrecking their educational environments, how do some male students self-identifying as black avoid the seductions of “street” ways of being and, in extremely rare cases, develop capacities for emotional self-control and concentration great enough to allow them to use their “failing ghetto schools” as launching pads into elite colleges? Inside their classrooms, why is it so difficult if not impossible for most teachers to consistently reproduce the triumphs of a handful of their colleagues rather than contribute, more or less forcefully, to their own “burn outs”? As the vignettes and biographical case studies woven into the empirical chapters reveal, adequate answers to these questions require that we move away from romanticized notions about resistance, disembodied fantasies about explicit cultural interpretations preceding real time actions, and essentialist assumptions about (the perpetual salience of) blackness and other seemingly discrete ethno-racial categories. Developing a fundamentally new way of thinking about everday dealing and self-destruction in fiercely segregated, physically unsafe, and emotionally toxic schools can help us avoid more pseudo-interventions and finally get serious about reforming the educational experiences of the poorly born.

Unsettled belonging is an ethnographic study that focuses on how young Palestinian Americans navigated and constructed belonging and citizenship across transnational fields; and it examines their ...
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Unsettled belonging is an ethnographic study that focuses on how young Palestinian Americans navigated and constructed belonging and citizenship across transnational fields; and it examines their encounters with an exclusionary politics of belonging that emerged from the routine practices of everyday U.S. nationalism inside their schools, in the post 9-11 decade. At the heart of this book rests a question about disjunctures of modern citizenship. Taking an anthropological perspective on citizenship as lived experiences through which people negotiate social, cultural, and political membership, the book analyzes a fundamental schism between the ways the Palestinian American youth experienced and constructed transnational citizenship and belonging, and the ways they were positioned as outsiders to the nation. Exploring the complex, flexible ways that the Palestinian American youth navigated belonging in transnational fields, the book shifts attention from a focus on youth identities to an account of how these social identities are intimately bound up with questions of belonging and citizenship. The book also deepens our understandings of the processes through which immigrant youth are racialized in the United States, focusing on the specific logics of everyday nationalism--nationalism that is bound up with this country’s contemporary imperial projects. Finally, the book raises normative questions about educating for national citizenship in contemporary times when more and more people’s lives are shaped within transnational social fields.Less

Unsettled Belonging : Educating Palestinian American Youth after 9/11

Thea Renda Abu El-Haj

Published in print: 2015-11-27

Unsettled belonging is an ethnographic study that focuses on how young Palestinian Americans navigated and constructed belonging and citizenship across transnational fields; and it examines their encounters with an exclusionary politics of belonging that emerged from the routine practices of everyday U.S. nationalism inside their schools, in the post 9-11 decade. At the heart of this book rests a question about disjunctures of modern citizenship. Taking an anthropological perspective on citizenship as lived experiences through which people negotiate social, cultural, and political membership, the book analyzes a fundamental schism between the ways the Palestinian American youth experienced and constructed transnational citizenship and belonging, and the ways they were positioned as outsiders to the nation. Exploring the complex, flexible ways that the Palestinian American youth navigated belonging in transnational fields, the book shifts attention from a focus on youth identities to an account of how these social identities are intimately bound up with questions of belonging and citizenship. The book also deepens our understandings of the processes through which immigrant youth are racialized in the United States, focusing on the specific logics of everyday nationalism--nationalism that is bound up with this country’s contemporary imperial projects. Finally, the book raises normative questions about educating for national citizenship in contemporary times when more and more people’s lives are shaped within transnational social fields.

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